


Off Track

by opalmatrix



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Choices, Community: Saiyuki_time, Gen, Memories, Mentor-Student, Non-Graphic Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-03-07
Updated: 2010-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-07 19:11:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/68278
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/opalmatrix/pseuds/opalmatrix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A walk back from town turns into an anniversary of sorts</p>
            </blockquote>





	Off Track

**Author's Note:**

> written for **[saiyuki_time](http://community.livejournal.com/saiyuki_time/)**, Challenge #44, The Road Not Taken; time allowed: 30 minutes; time taken: 35 minutes. (Written February 2009) **Afterword:** Several readers at the original posting mentioned the little exchange at the end. It's been nagging at me, and I finally figured out why: the same exchange occurs in Ellen Kushner's _Swordspoint_. The context is different, but the same connection occurs between choosing a path on a physical journey and choosing a path in life events (for those who have read the book, it's at the end of the scene where Michael Godwin has been sent overseas and finds himself the guest of honor at a huge banquet).

It's a bright mid-morning, with flashes of sun breaking through the cluttery skies, but he remembers when it was dark, and rainy.

Hakkai sets the full market basket down carefully on a rock and looks behind him, back toward town. There, coming in from the north side of the road, is the track that ultimately leads back to the ruins of Hyakugan Mao's castle. Some 10 yards closer to him, another track staggers off into the trees. It's not quite a crossroads. Maybe that was what kept him from continuing on south on that wet night a year ago.

He wouldn't have known, those three hundred and sixty-odd nights ago, that the southward track ended a quarter mile farther on at the farmstead of Window Lao, her two near-grown sons, and several dozen of the meanest pigs in the world. Black-bristled, arch-backed, omnivorous, and semi-wild, they roamed the woods by day, eating roots and acorns and the occasional snake or dead squirrel. Children in town whispered tales of a boy who'd run away from home and never came back. They found his cap in the pig-trampled mud a hundred feet from the window's house, the children said, and later his bones were found in the woods nearby.

An unconscious man wouldn't have had a chance.

Hakkai turns his face back toward home  Gojyo's home  but doesn't pick up the basket. There, another couple of dozen feet along, is the ditch that finally tripped his staggering feet. He walks to the edge of it, squats down. Now he can see the view he saw as he looked up  minus Gojyo's shocked, surprised face. Then the back of his neck prickles with the feeling of being watched, and he turns around.

Sanzo is standing in the middle of the not-quite-crossroads, watching him.

Hakkai presses his lips together, but he owes Sanzo too much not to greet him. He walks reluctantly back to where he left his shopping. "Good morning, Sanzo."

Sanzo grunts, apparently not ready to go as far as agreeing to the character of the morning. He strolls past Hakkai, pauses at the lip of the ditch himself, then shrugs and turns around again, fumbling in the sleeve of his robe and coming up with his cigarettes and lighter.

"Where's Goku?"

"Helping clean out the baker's storeroom in exchange for two dozen bean jam buns." Sanzo lights his smoke efficiently and makes the rest of the packet and the lighter disappear. "So. This is the spot, huh?"

Hakkai is more irritated than surprised. "Yes."

"Just about a year. Huh. Feeling nostalgic?"

"I guess one could put it that way. I was wondering whether it would have made any difference if I'd taken the south track."

Sanzo glances toward the pig-farm track and blows a stream of smoke in the general direction of the future suppliers of pork-bun filling. Then he sits down next to Hakkai's basket and shrugs out of the top half of his robe. "A year ago? Goku couldn't read, or count past 10. That red-headed idiot you live with was well on his way to drinking himself into an early grave. A band of thieves was emptying temple offering boxes and treasuries for leagues around."

"That's not much. Not compared to what "

"Exactly what I mean. It's only been a year. You've only just started the payback. Don't even _think_ of trying to duck out on the rest."

Hakkai opens his mouth, then closes it again. Sanzo nudges the basket with his elbow. "Better get this home, before the widow's pigs come looking for what's left of their brother in here."

"Sanzo ... ."

"Go on, get. I didn't come all the way out here looking for company."

They stare at each other for a moment, Hakkai grim and mulish, Sanzo calm but with the little vertical lines between his eyebrows deepening as the seconds tick by. At last Hakkai lets out an exasperated breath and holds out his hand for the basket. Sanzo hands it to him, then closes his eyes.

"Thank you," says Hakkai, after a moment, and leaves.

The clouds have almost all burned away by the time he arrives at the door to the house, and Hakkai can no longer remember what this part of the road looked like a year ago. Gojyo opens the door before Hakkai even reaches for the knob, a mug of tea in one hand and a worried look just leaving his lean face. He takes the basket without being asked.

"Hey, what happened, man? Take a wrong turn?"

"No, not really," says Hakkai.

 


End file.
